


rEALITY mALFUNCTIONS

by rosesandcinnamon



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Car Accidents, F/F, eremin if you squint, glitch in the matrix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-04 00:10:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1760379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosesandcinnamon/pseuds/rosesandcinnamon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On their way to the store, Mikasa and Annie get hit by a car running the red light.<br/>Mikasa wakes up in the hospital, asking for Annie. Eren looks at her strangely.<br/>"Who are you talking about?"<br/>She wakes up, and Annie never existed in her life.<br/>In this life.<br/>---<br/>Inspired by the "glitch in the matrix" phenomenon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. so it begins

**Author's Note:**

> HEY. [This](http://angrynerdyblogger.tumblr.com/post/83262721127/how-exactly-would-you-describe-a-glitch-in-the) is what a glitch in the matrix is.  
> If you're like me, and ghosts and shit are nothing to you, but reality doing things it shouldn't freaks you the fuck out, I suggest you not read this.  
> I'm going with a different style for this, because, I don't know, it feels right. Let me know what you think of it!

Mikasa Ackerman and Annie Leonhardt.

Their friends joke about them.

“Such a perfect couple, how did they not get together earlier?”

“’Cause they fucking hated each other, remember?”

“Haha, oh yeah.”

He’s right, of course.

Throughout their (almost) entire school years, they competed. Best grades, best projects, best test scores, best at this sport and that sport and “we didn’t even know this school _had_ that sport”. Always vying to be the best, be _better_ than the best, barely contained hatred clear in their every interaction.

And then, in senior year, something…

Snapped.

No one knows, exactly. But suddenly they spoke, they spoke as if they were friends, even dating eventually. Competition turned into teamwork, being the best _together_ , instead of apart.

If asked, Mikasa just looks at you, as if the relationship between the two is too unfathomable for anyone but them.

If asked, Annie smirks, and tells you “It’s none of your business”.

And, truly, it _is_ none of your business.

The two have a bond running deeper than anyone can understand, rivaling, though not reaching, Ymir and Historia.

How could a relationship like theirs be explained?

It can’t.

But, in our favor, they are…

Weaker.

When apart.

Oh, even they know it.

They just never expected this.

How could they, if this isn’t how reality is supposed to work?


	2. mornings

Their morning routine is simple.

Mikasa will get up first, do some sort of crazy workout, shower, make coffee for the both of them. Annie will get up after that, and they eat and dress together.

A little milk, two sugars.

That’s how Annie likes her coffee.

Mikasa makes it with ease, long since memorized the simple steps.

She sets it on the counter, where it waits for Annie.

_She knew she put it there._

She turns to the fridge, putting the milk back, glancing around in hopes of finding something breakfast suitable.

Wait, don’t they have bacon?

Fuck yes.

She finds the bacon, takes it out, cuts some off, the normal routine.

It’s in the pan, and she turns around.

Annie’s cup of coffee isn’t there anymore.

Mikasa frowns.

Annie wouldn’t have come in without saying good morning, she’s too affectionate towards her to do that.

And besides, she would have heard her.

_She knew she put it there._

Slightly disturbed, she makes toast and eggs, drinking her own coffee.

Annie comes in, feet light on the floor, and Mikasa hears her, turning with a smile.

She’s carrying her cup of coffee, face creased in confusion.

“When did you bring my coffee into the bedroom? And why? I’ve been awake, I didn’t hear you.”

Mikasa goes pale.

“I… didn’t…”

“What?”

“I put it on the counter, got the bacon and when I turned around, it was gone. Annie, I haven’t left the kitchen.”

Annie slips onto one of the stools, setting the cup down and holding her head in her hands.

“Ironically, I haven’t had enough coffee to deal with this.”

They never speak of the incident again.


	3. and it happens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if car accidents are not your thing dont read half of this chapter!

The two women are workhorses.

Mikasa, a successful detective in the local police department, capable and calm and really, very good in an emergency, any stressful situation.

(But that’s work, and as time proves, work is much, much different.)

Annie is a world-famous martial arts fighter, settled back in their hometown with Mikasa, teaching at gyms nearby.

That’s why they work so well together, really. They’re so similar. They know when to call, tell her to come home, when to drag her to bed because “you need the sleep, idiot”.

They understand each other.

So they drop all their barriers, all the “we are totally competent adults” bullshit, when together.

“Annie. Annie, let’s go shopping.”

Mikasa hangs over the side of the couch, smiling at her, and Annie sets her book down.

“That. That takes work.”

“Yeah, but we need food. You can choose dinner, just come on.”

“Fiiiine, we’ll get pitas.”

“You’re the best.”

Mikasa finds their jackets and shoes, shoving Annie’s at her, waiting at the door.

With a mutter of “I don’t have a girlfriend, I have a puppy” from her, they leave, laughing and jostling each other.

The trip is normal.

They bicker over groceries, lug them to the car, eat pitas, and are on their way home.

Mikasa is a good driver.

Careful, precise, very cautious, all her attention is given to the road.

It’s not her fault.

Truly, it’s not.

The light turns green, she goes forward, and a car she had no chance to see runs the red light.

It slammed into their car with a sickening crunch. Mikasa had barely any time before-

_Annie._

the world was black.


	4. who are you talking about?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If hospitals and injuries put you off, let me know at roses-and-cinnamon.tumblr.com and I can edit it out for you!

Mikasa woke up in a hospital room, machines beeping softly, and Eren at her bedside.

She blinked a few times, trying to wake up.

But she went back to sleep before doing anything.

When she wakes again, it’s much much later, but Eren’s still there, and he sits up.

“Mikasa? You’re awake.”

She nods, glancing around. He has Armin’s hoodie, so they’re both here.

But…

She swallows, trying to clear her dry throat.

“Annie?”

Eren frowns, and her voice rises.

“Where’s Annie?”

He looks at her strangely.

“Who are you talking about?”

She doesn’t remember what happens after that.

The next time she’s awake, she stays awake, and Eren’s absent, but Armin’s there. He doesn’t notice at first, caught up in reading something on the phone.

“Armin?”

He snaps his attention to her, smiling.

“Mikasa, how do you feel?”

She pauses, considering.

“Weird. Can you tell me what happened?”

He takes her hand and she realizes her arm is in a cast.

“You were driving home from the store, and got in an accident. It’s entirely the other driver’s fault, he ran the red light and was driving drunk. No worries there, okay? Your car’s pretty banged up, we’re not sure if insurance covers it yet or if it’s worth fixing.”

Her head reels from all the information, but she understands.

“As for you, injuries are not what they could have been. Your arm’s broken, the fracture’s closed, not open, you hit your head pretty bad, and a shard of glass cut your face. Pretty lucky, really.”

She nods slowly.

“What about Annie? Eren- Eren didn’t answer me.”

His brow furrows, and he leans closer.

“There was no one else in the car, Mikasa. We don’t know an Annie.”

She stares at him, and bursts into tears.

It’s entirely unexpected. Mikasa doesn’t cry, not often, and Armin’s shocked.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay-“

She shakes her head, confused and scared and feeling so small, so alone.

Where’s Annie?


	5. going on (1/2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2 part chapter to make up for the wait and its longer than these chapters are normally

And life goes on, as it always does.

She’s released the next day, Eren and Armin staying with her for much longer than she wants them to, and she notices something very very strange.

The groceries, which Eren and Armin retrieved for her, are all for one. Nothing of Annie’s. Her apartment is entirely her own. Nothing that wasn’t already hers.

As soon as she convinces the boys to leave her alone, her desperation shows through.

She spends hours on Google and Facebook trying to find her. Hours looking through all twelve yearbooks she has, scouring the pages for a picture, a name.

 _Anything_.

But she finds nothing.

Annie Leonhardt didn’t exist.

The bed smelled of nothing but herself. The only hints of other people were the photos on the walls and various things of Eren and Armin’s.

She spent a lot of time sitting on the floor, trying to make sense of it all.

And, a lot of time with the boys. She couldn’t handle being in a place that was her and Annie’s without Annie, couldn’t handle expecting to see her on the couch or asleep in bed or joining her in the shower.

Couldn’t handle being alone.

Mikasa knew they worried about her, not understanding the sudden change, but she couldn’t fathom what had happened.

She didn’t understand, not at all, why one moment her girlfriend existed and the next she didn’t.

-

She never gets over it.

Oh, she tries. She convinces herself for a few months it was all her imagination, a fever dream while she was in the hospital.

That doesn’t last long.

She’d like to just give up, let things lie, but something in her can’t.

So two years later, Mikasa is having a cup of coffee with Armin, listening idly to him as she organizes the contents of his bag.

“So, last night, Hanji linked me to this thread online about-“

She smirks, interrupting him softly.

“By last night, do you mean early this morning?”

He rolls his eyes, and by the faint redness on his cheeks, he’s lying.

“No, shut up. So, the thread was about reality malfunctioning, weird things that shouldn’t happen happening. Like, um, you put your car keys on the table, say, and when you go to look for them, they’re in the kitchen without you or anyone else moving them. It’s called a glitch in the matrix.”

Her face is extremely pale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title drop bitch


	6. and explanations (2/2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is long too but w/e

His blue eyes go wide, and he gently touches her hand, wariness in his voice.

“Mikasa?”

She blinks, and looks at him again.

“Like… Like putting a cup of coffee down, turning away, and finding it in the bedroom?”

He redoes his hair, a habit he has when thinking, and answers her.

“Yeah, yeah, that would be it, if you were certain no one else touched it-“

She withdraws her hand, narrowly avoiding knocking her cup off the table, and puts her head in her hands.

He says her name again, and his voice is a little higher than normal.

“Armin?”

“…Yeah?”

He’s staring at the top of her head warily, not really understanding what’s going on.

“Do you think it can happen to people too?”

Mikasa, in high school, was affectionately given the nickname “Mama Mikasa”. She made sure all of her friends had eaten, had slept for a good few hours, were feeling okay, and did everything humanely possible to help them if something was wrong.

It wasn’t often someone mom voice’d her.

But Armin did.

“Mikasa, what is going on?”

She sighed heavily, and sat up, taking a sip of her tea.

“Okay. When I woke up in the hospital, after that car accident, you remember. I asked you about- about Annie. You told me we don’t know an Annie. Right?”

Her voice falters, but her girlfriend’s name came just as easily to her lips as it had before, and he looks at her carefully.

“Yeah, you did.”

“You can ask Eren too, I asked for her the first time I woke up.”

He waits for her to continue patiently.

“She is… was? I- I don’t know anymore. She was my girlfriend. We grew up together, same as everyone else. You two were friends, even. Bertholdt and Reiner were her best friends, and we _hated_ each other until high school. I twisted my ankle in gym, and she gave me a wrap for it. And then we were friends, and then we were dating. We stayed together, through college and then we got an apartment together, and the day I got in that accident, we went to the grocery store and got dinner. I- I woke up and she didn’t exist.”

Armin’s carefully keeping his expression composed, and her eyes are focused in the distance.

“I looked through all the yearbooks, Googled her, searched on Facebook, and came up with nothing. Annie Leonhardt. Never the right one, if there was one I could find. All the time I spent at your place? Yeah. I couldn’t stand being there by myself.”

They’re quiet for a moment, and he leans forward.

“ _Holy shit_.”

Her eyes are wide.

“You believe me?”

“Of course I do, Mikasa. You were so upset after you got out, it was horrible. I _wondered_ what was wrong!”

He smiles at her, gently, and she can’t help but smile back.

“Do you mind if I tell Hanji? They’d freak out.”

She shrugs.

“Go ahead, they could help. Maybe.”

He nods, thinking for a moment.

“Hey, does that mean the coffee thing happened to you?”

She sighs, and nods.

“I was making breakfast, and made coffee for Annie. I set it down, turned away. When I looked again, it was gone. She came in a few minutes later with her coffee, asking when and why I had brought it into the bedroom. I hadn’t left the kitchen.”  



	7. what a stupid and fragile heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I am so not sorry._

Mikasa waits outside a little shop for Eren, idly watching interesting passerby.

And an interesting passerby she sees.

The first thing she notices is the woman’s nose.

It’s far from the conventionally attractive, teeny and delicate, it looks like it had been broken a few times and seems vaguely hawk-ish.

It reminds her of Annie, as do a lot of things, but she’s prepared to just smile slightly and go about her day.

Then she gets caught on her short, quick strides as she reaches the bench beside the bus stop sign.

Annie always walked so fast, making up for her short legs. Even Mikasa struggled to keep up with her, sometimes, and they readjusted to each other.

Curious about her, Mikasa glances to look more closely at her face, and the blonde, blonde hair makes her stop.

Annie’s hair was so lightly colored, she teased her about not being able to see the grey hairs. It was a running joke between them.

But it’s the hairstyle that’s really unsettling.

With the length she kept her hair, Annie couldn’t do very much with it.  Tiny ponytails annoyed her, leaving it down tickled her sensitive neck, so she put it in a bun. Mikasa had always been convinced it was magic. She had barely enough hair for a ponytail, how could she fold it over into a bun? But later, she realized, when working or concentrating on something, she did the same. It made her smile, and really did keep her hair out of the way.

This woman, sitting on a bench waiting for a bus, has her hair the same way.

A little beat of fluttering hope begins to shove its way into Mikasa’s heart. All she does is stare from across the street, a block away, waiting for- waiting for _something_.

Then the stranger looks up, glancing at something that caught her attention, and she feels more hopeful than she’s ever been.

She knows that “resting bitchface”, the way her mouth turned down at the corners and the angry set of her eyebrows, the tightness in the way she holds her expression. It hides, or hid, a gentle and playful interior.

Mikasa can’t believe this. She can’t believe herself. She can’t believe her _stupid_ and _fragile_ heart holds hope after all this time.

She walks faster.

She runs.

The woman isn’t too far away, come on, she did tons of sports in high school and kept her crazy muscles, what’s a little dead-out sprinting?

Too little, it seems.

She reaches the crosswalk quickly, hits the button a few times too many, and it’s time wasted.

By the time Mikasa reaches the bus stop, no one’s sitting there. There’s no one fitting Annie’s description walking away, or nearby. The bus isn’t here yet.

It feels like her heart breaks again.

She sits down on the bench to regain her breath, staring at the pavement.

Oh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
